JW: Storm
by MoonMadKitty
Summary: A small look back at the early days between Owen and the Raptor Squad. No spoilers (well, no more than the publicity has already offered).


Baby monitors are one of the best inventions in the history of mankind; just ask any parent or caregiver. They provide a tremendous volume of peace of mind, if only because you can put some distance between yourself and the endless demands of your knee-high parasites while still keeping an eye on them.

He knew he had an advantage over many parents; once the girls went down for the night, they were down. The science team had been surprised to find out that they dreamt; he hadn't. It had taken a while, but he'd eventually learned to sleep through their night-time noises, chirps and chirrs and low streams of grumbling, the occasional excited thump as their dreams got a little too exciting or, a few times, the sleepiest of arguments over someone getting kicked a little too energetically.

By comparison, the terror-stricken alarm call, gritty as it was with static, went through Owen like a lightning bolt. He was on his feet and groping for a gun before he even knew what he was doing. On the radio unit embedded in the wall next to his bed, Blue –he didn't even need to see her to know it was her- drew another deep breath and shrilled, ear-piercingly, for help.

He staggered away from the bed and dove frantically through the heap of clothes he'd left on the floor. Cargo pants were found, reinforced canvas with most of the pockets missing. He stuffed one leg roughly into the appropriate sleeve, maybe, and looked around frantically for his boots.

It was a fifteen minute walk from the overnight sleeping quarters to the nursery ward; Owen sprinted barefoot through the empty hallways and to the lab in three. Windows at regular intervals showed absolutely nothing but the driving brutality of Tropical Storm Nadine, water in sheets, wind in rivers and thunder cracking overhead so loudly he could actually feel the concussive force through the soles of his feet. There was a frightened techie stuttering at him as he barged through the normally isolated, artificially chilled space. He ignored her and made soothing word-noises at her, but his attention was fully fixed on the plaintive calls coming at him directly, each one a punch to the gut. "Could you let me in? I left my card in my other pants."

Further flustered and obedient as a good dog, the techie preceded him to the massive, reinforced door connecting the lab to the nursery room and ran her card through the keypad, hurrying awkwardly through her password. The door unlocked, and automatically Owen's hand lashed out and caught the heavy handle; two smart thuds echoed from the other side and the techie jumped to each one. He gave her his best, most earnest and dutiful look. It helped immensely with all the geek-squad to look hang-dog and dutiful, though he couldn't for the life of him figure out why. "You might also wanna… you know. Not be near them right now."

She answered with a strangled "Ok" and fled like a deer.

Teeth-aching scraping sounds were coming from the other side of the door, although at least the screaming had diminished to anxious whining. He plugged the narrow gap in the door with one leg and slid it open just enough. "Alright, alright, I'm here. Come on, back up and let me in. Back up. I said, **back up**." The plucking teeth and talons he'd felt tugging and nibbling on his pants reacted to the stern note that had pointedly crept into his tone and released him, allowing him to slide into the room without leaving a gap for an opportunistic little brat or three. He closed the door and felt the heavy locks slide into place with four solid thuds.

Under normal circumstances no one went into the nursery room when the girls were in – not without four people at the door, three of which were usually armed with tranq-guns and tasers. They were generally out in their enclosure when the room was refreshed. Their enclosure, however, was being battered at the moment by seventy-mile-an-hour winds and enough rain to make Noah nervous. Another crack of thunder made the triple-reinforced walls shake, and Owen was instantly wearing the latest in terrified raptor baby fashion, arms thrown up in automatic surrender. Only Blue remained defiant, though one clawed foot was firmly planted on her Alpha's boot while she reared up, whip-tail smacking against Owen's shin rhythmically. While her skull bones were not, as of yet, fully developed, nonetheless she gave the loud interloper outside their walls a very stern and warbling warning.

"You tell 'em, Blue." Owen cheered her on, and vaguely wondered when she would grow into the full-throated, blood-chilling call of an adult velociraptor. Looking about the room and its endless clutter of 'enrichment', he found at last a spot where he could sit with his back to the wall and room to stretch his legs. This he did with a long, low sigh; the wall was cold, the floor was roughly textured, and his warm bed, though borrowed, seemed very far away already.

And yet, as muscled little bodies closed in on him, he put his arms out and murmured soothing, idle chatter. The girls were growing at a phenomenal rate; it was not hard for him to see the day when such physical contact with them would grow too dangerous to continue bearing down upon them like an unavoidable reckoning and he knew, though he'd never admit it out loud, that it would be a miserable day for him.

"Hey. Hey, guys." Voice quiet, his hands moved over bobbing wedge-shaped heads and nervously arched backs, scratching under chins and behind ear-hollows. They hopped and clambered on his lap and launched into detailed accounts of this Most Scary Situation, the first true tropical storm to hit Nublar since their hatching. Tails whapped him and each other, and as they did not readily acknowledge the impacts neither did he. "I know, I know, it's nasty out there, huh? That mean ol' storm."

Charlie tried to claim Owen's lap by flopping upon it, and was promptly evicted by an irate hiss and sharp head-bob from Echo. "Hey." His tone drew them all short; Owen leaned forward, head tucked down – a passable, if unfortunately hominid mimic of Echo's head-bob. "Cut it out, Echo."

The young raptor ducked low, tail tucked to one side; she didn't quite belly up to him – she'd long passed the point where she'd willingly do so, but offered a meek row of chirping apologies. The point was moot, anyways: Charlie, rock-steady creature that she was shaping out to be, had wriggled herself into an impossible ball between the wall and Owen's hip, and her eyes were already half-closed as she absently chewed on her tail-tip. He fished that tail-tip away from those jaws with two fingertips, and rubbed lightly at the point where Charlie's neck muscles connected to her skull. A sigh too vast for the little body went through her. "How do you even do tha- **HEY**."

A squabble had broken out directly on his lap between Echo and Delta, and it had gone from posturing to snarling lunges in no time flat. Blue, wiser than them, had already leapt up onto one of Mom's shoulders, her weight and the tick of her claws sure to leave scrapes there for later. His tone and volume, however, had all four of the girls immediately snap to attention, though Echo and Delta wilted as Mom growled at them. "Cut. It. Out."

Grumbling protests every step of the way, Delta surrendered the high ground and hopped down to join Charlie; the youngest sister was all too happy to welcome another warm body to her nook, for all that no volume increase seemed to occur within the area. Echo, however, had apparently wanted the competition, not the actual lap. She turned, hopped from leg to leg, sniffed, explored and finally curled up, instead, directly over both of Owen's knees. "Well, that's just contrary", he murmured, watching this with a wry, amused expression.

Blue leapt down lightly onto the now empty lap and straightened up until she stood just of a height with his chin, tail stretched out flat behind her.

"Yes, Blue."

She chirped peremptorily.

"No kidding?"

She cough-warbled a stout response.

Owen smiled, careful not to show his teeth. Blue was intelligent; they all were, far more than any animal he'd ever met or worked with. Though he knew they didn't understand the conversation, he also knew they were beginning to associate words with meanings: "food", "play" and, infamously, "bath". Blue, however, did something the others didn't: she reacted to tone. She would always give him her undivided attention if his tone strayed into the upward swing of a question, as long as he was the most interesting thing around. "Don't have to tell me twice."

She shook herself from nose to tail-tip, and bent down to sniff at his lap. Owen could feel, against his hip and on his knees, the trip-hammer beat of those fierce little hearts, the radiating warmth of the tiny bodies pressed against him. They would not be this little for long, he knew; they would not be afraid of storms forever, and his heart broke a little at the thought that there would not be a lot of nights like this one, when his presence had made the only and immediate difference between fear and courage.

And then his attention came back, with pointed and immediate attention, to his lap. With the resigned, low tone only a parent who's had a six-year-old explain the critical importance of Sandwich Day, he pleaded, "Blue…"

She was giving him a thousand-yard stare, forelegs tucked flush against her chest, taloned fingers clasped and attention focused completely inward as she knead-knead-kneaded at his lap, as absolutely lost to this most important task as a cat.

Her talons were about an inch-and-a-half, and the killing sickle-claw was three.

She was also a long way from learning the automatic muscle control that would keep the claw up and away from the ground. Even over the dull roar of the storm outside he could hear each _rp_ , _rp_ , _rp_ sound as those talons caught on the heavy-duty canvas of his pants. "This? This is why we can't have nice things. Blue… Blue. I swear to you on the head of my children – that's you, by the way. I swear, it don't get any softer."

She ignored him, eyes closing slowly as she kept on kneading, and sinking, lower down onto his lap. By the time she came too low to keep on kneading, Owen knew he'd lost yet another pair of pants. He was also going to be bleeding. Just a touch. But she was asleep and he refused to budge her.

The storm roared on outside, tearing off branches and battering the buildings outside. Whenever its noise began to draw nervous noises from his girls, Owen ran gentle hands over their spines.

Barry found him there the next morning, when the door to the outer enclosure opened and the raptors gleefully catapulted off their Mom to rush outside into the bright sunlight. It was not a comfortable wake-up call: his neck was killing him, his back was calling him nasty words, and someone had kicked him in the gut in the mad, merry dash for freedom. Barry's all-too-bright smile was just adding insult to injury, and Owen growled automatically.

"Were you in here all night?"

"Depends, what time is it?"

"Eight thirty." Barry offered him a hand up that Owen took automatically.

Even upright, he found he couldn't even begin to parse anything beyond blinking owlishly at the bright sunlight outside, and so he offered an equally automatic reply as he stumbled out onto the enclosure to measure the scope of any damage. "Shut up."

"I wasn't laughing!" Barry followed him, his voice full of amusement. "Yet."


End file.
